List of Joyce Carol Oates Quotes

Before I Undertake A Lengthy Project, I Have Usually Given Much Thought To It Over A Period Of Years. My Files Are Filled With Likely Subjects - Which Perhaps, One Day, I Will Develop.

Though I Am Never Exactly "blocked" I Do Have Difficult Periods. I Am Led By A Fascination With Material - The Challenge Of Presenting It In An Original And Engaging Way. I Have No Problem Imagining Stories, Characters, Distinctive Settings & Themes - But The Difficulty Is Choosing A Voice & A Language In Which To Present It.

Characters Begin As Voices, Then Gain Presence By Being Viewed In Others' Eyes. Characters Define One Another In Dramatic Contexts. It Is Often Very Exciting, When Characters Meet - Out Of Their Encounters, Unanticipated Stories Can Spring.

If Shakespeare's Great Plays Are Variants Of Stories, Even Novels, You Can See How Each Character Is Telling His Story From His Perspective; Each Is Vying With The Others For Dominance, But In The End, In Tragedy, Most Of These Voices Will Die, To Be Replaced By The Yet More Vigorous Voice Of A Younger Generation.

Shakespeare Would Seem To Have Been A Person For Whom The Human Voice/personality In All Its Splendid Idiosyncrasy Was Absolutely Enthralling.

Sometimes I Stumble Upon A Wonderfully Irresistible To Me Voice, Unexpectedly.

To Choose The Ideal Voice For A Character Is To Give A Character An Ardent And Vivid Life, To Allow Him Or Her To Speak, Rather Than Speaking For Them, In An Older Style Of Omniscient Narration.

One Of The Qualities Of Writing That Is Not Much Stressed Is Its Problem-solving Aspect, Having To Do With The Presentation Of Material: How To Structure It, What Sort Of Sentences (direct, Elliptical, Simple Or Compound, Syntactically Elaborate), What Tone (in Art, "tone" Is Everything), Pacing. Paragraphing Is A Way Of Dramatization, As The Look Of A Poem On A Page Is Dramatic; Where To Break Lines, Where To End Sentences.

I See The World In Ways That Might Be Considered Somewhat Harsh And Darwinistic. At The Same Time Mediated, As In Darwin, By A Real Idealism And An Excitement About The Possibilities Of The Intellect And Imagination To Deal With This Somewhat Brutal World.

I Tend To Think In Dramatic Terms. In Life, There May Be An Actual Drama, But It Would Be The Fictionalized, Imagined Drama That Engaged Me.

Henry David Thoreau Is Very Independent-minded, Very Iconoclastic, And Had Quite A Corrosive Sense Of Humor. I Think That I Probably Have Grown Up To Have A Thoreauvian Perspective On Many Things. Though In Other Ways I Live A Life He Would Not Have Approved Of. He Believed To Simplify, Simplify, Simplify. Make Your Life Very Clear And Plain And Meditative And Not Confused. Sometimes My Life, In Fact, Is Confused.

"politics" Per Se Is Absent From My Writing But There Is Usually A Moral (if Ironic) Compass.